Inductor-capacitor passive wireless sensors using nonlinear parity-time symmetric configurations

Abstract An inductor–capacitor passive wireless sensor is essential to physical, chemical, and biological sensing for scenarios where physical access is difficult. Exceptional points of parity-time symmetric inductor–capacitor systems featuring the linear loss and gain have been utilized for enhancing sensing. However, the exceptional point sensing scheme might bring about fundamental resolution limits and noise enhancement. Here we show, employing a nonlinear saturable gain, the responsivity has a cube-root singularity distinct from a square-root singularity of the linear exceptional point scheme. The saturable gain eliminates the imaginary part of the eigenfrequencies and significantly suppresses the noise. Through an example of inductor–capacitor wireless wearable temperature sensors, we demonstrate the high figure of merit for the nonlinear PT-symmetric configuration. Our results resolve a debate on the effectiveness of the exceptional point sensing scheme for inductor–capacitor sensors and provide a way of enhancing precision for these types of sensors.